One unnoticeable degree at a time, parts of me had started to die, slowly. So slow that I was blind to it.

Like death by a thousand paper cuts. The factors are my own doing, but I imagine you have factors of your own. For me, the list looked something like this…

Almost 15 years of marriage (anyone who tells you marriage is easy hasn’t been married long 😃). 5 kids. 7 moves. Baggage from my own childhood. A few different jobs. Launching a new company. Pain suppressed and medicated, not with pills but with busyness, optimism and “success”.

What once stood tall and proud, full and beautiful, I woke up and my life felt like that Bradford Pear. 45 degrees from true north and 45 degrees from destruction.

Unlike the strong winds that blew in our backyard, my leaning felt more like a million tiny whispers over the years.

You’ll know more of the story someday, but I’m glad mine has a different physical ending than the tree whose limbs will now roast marshmallows instead of provide shade for our bedroom window.

But the dying part resonated with me, like the down deep sort of harmony. Like the reality that something dying makes room for something new to grow.

Such is the dance of life I suppose.

That Sunday night, the girls asked me to cut rings off the trunk of our now dead tree, for them to remember this beauty. I cut one for myself too.

It will sit on my desk, near my computer. A homemade coaster of sorts.

Hopefully, when I see it, I’ll remember the longing from our daughter.

Just because something is dying, doesn’t mean you stop fighting for it. Words too profound for her to fully comprehend. She’s right, it’s worth fighting.

And maybe the best way to fight is to lay it down and see what grows in its place.

“Baby, what’s wrong? You can talk to me about it.” It was last Friday night, the first night in our new-to-us house.

Once she knew she had permission to be real, the floodgates opened.

The tears came flying.

“I just…I just feel like we’re making a mistake. Are we making a mistake? I miss our old house…”

It was sandwiched between raw emotion, but the answer to her question was what she was pursuing.

She wanted reassurance. She wanted someone to tell her it would be OK.

Her question cut me to the core.

A lot of this was my idea after all. This whole moving thing.

We’ve done a lot of it in her 12 years of life. This is her 6th house. Not exactly how I would have drawn it up 12 years ago, but it’s how our story has unfolded.

This time, we didn’t have to move. There wasn’t a new job, not even a new city.

We moved less than 5 miles away. Same city, same school district, same lots of things.

But to her, we might as well have moved to Italy. It all felt different now. The things she had grown comfortable with in our old home were gone. The hallway to her room was empty. The bedroom she made her own was someone else’s now.

There are far greater struggles in our country, in my own life even, than moving homes in a relatively safe, kid-friendly, Midwestern city. I get it.

But last Friday night, when she cried and cried wondering if we were making the right decision, I had to tell her something.

I had a couple choices.

My first, most natural inclination, was to smile and encourage us all to power through it. Try and fix it. Try and tell her about all the amazing memories she’ll make in this new house.

Optimism is a gift, but it can be a dangerous curse too. My rose-colored views can isolate those around me who don’t share that view, or at least as often as I have it.

The second, most real inclination, and gratefully the one I chose, was to hug her and not try to rescue her. That’s not my job. My job is love and lead her.

The most loving thing I could have done in that moment was to cry with her and say, “I don’t know baby, we might be. But tomorrow is a new day. I believe we’re here now for a reason, but it’s going to take time.”

I’ve made a million mistakes in my life, likely even in the last month. I don’t think it is, but this may be one of them.

But in the mistakes, I’m learning not to smile my way through them. I’m learning to lean into them, find out why I made them in the first place, and trust the mistake is part of the story that’s unfolding in my life. For my good.

And bigger than that, I’m convinced that part of living a meaningful, adventurous, courageous life is stubbing your toe fairly often.

Sure, you can avoid the pain by not moving, not taking action and playing it safe.

But like the mat we had on our front porch in our now old house says, “Let New Adventures Begin.”

This morning, she came down the stairs, after we had dear friends to our new house late last night, and said, “This is growing on me. For sure.”

The new adventure has begun, even if it comes with some question marks and bloody toes.

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Thanks for swinging by, I appreciate it. Looking forward to connecting and continuing the conversation about how love can impact your business. Send an email to justin@justinricklefs.com with any questions or comments.